Speedrun Fast: Dark Souls III

Dark Souls III, the latest in the series, wasted no time in achieving critical acclaim after its release. Over 200,000 PS4 copies were sold in Japan alone in just two weeks, making the game Bandai Namco’s top-selling title and most successful day-one launch. As of May 10, 2016, over three million copies had been sold around the world, with North America staking claim to half those numbers.

For Speedrun Fast, Youtuber and Twitch streamer Distortion2 brings us a speedrun of Dark Souls III clocking in at a little over 50 minutes on the in-game clock. Ironically, the run was uploaded to Youtube on May 11, one day after the report of the three million mark. The actual video is about an hour long, with the time difference being due to in-game timers not measuring pause states.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbNHkBj7PF8[/embedyt]

Several tricks are employed during Distortion’s run to optimize time and gameplay. Quitting and restarting not only skips lengthy cutscenes, but it also resets enemy positions to make it easier to get through them. It’s also useful for surviving falls that would otherwise be deadly. This strategy is viable because the run is being measured by in-game time rather than real-life time. Another method used is mostly for safety. Distortion frequently spam-equips the sword for its healing ability. It gives two HP per second, starting immediately after equipping it. Doing this rapidly causes it to heal much more quickly.

Dark Souls III speedruns are every bit as impressive as runs of its predecessors, both of which are also possible in less than an hour. But this isn’t the end yet. A DLC expansion is set for release later this year, with two more to follow sometime in 2017. Congratulations to Distortion for the world record run, and to every speedrunner out there, please continue to speedrun fast and never stop.

Matt Eschbach is a PC, Mac and Android indie game developer and fiction writer. His works have won multiple monetary awards from various contests. Graduating college in 2012 with a major in Game Design, Matt spends his time making stuff up and then building it. His favorite hobby… is sleeping.